All for love

In honor of Valentine’s Day, the Gazette partnered with the Woodberry Poetry Room in selecting a fitting poem for the holiday devoted to love.

Poet and onetime Harvard student Robert Creeley wrote “For Love” for his second wife. Now, more than 50 years after its publication in his 1962 book of the same name, “For Love” gets new life with this reading by three Harvard faculty members: Stephen Greenblatt, the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities; Virginie Greene, professor of Romance languages and literatures; and Jill Lepore, David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History and chair of the History and Literature Program.

Paired with both quirky and earnest vintage valentines from the Harvard University Archives and the Schlesinger Library, the poem reminds us that the pursuit of love and our struggle to understand it endure.

Send your own vintage valentine from the Harvard Library collection.

— Sarah Sweeney, Harvard Staff Writer